TUMORS OF THE EYELIDS.
Warts. The most common tumors of the eyelids in horses, cattle, and dogs are warts. These are most simply disposed of by seizing them with rat-tooth forceps and clipping them off with sharp scissors curved on the flat. Any bleeding may be checked by a pencil of silver nitrate.
Sarcoma, melanoma, and epithelioma are common in solipeds, especially in the gray and white. They usually form a cauliflower-like mass red and angry and bleed easily. They may occupy any part of the lid, the skin, the dark tarsal margin, the connective tissue or the mucosa, and not unfrequently they involve the eyeball, and the surrounding tissues, even the bones of the orbit.
Treatment. These may be excised like warts taking care to remove every vestige of disease. In these cases I have usually found it necessary to remove the entire bulb.
FRACTURE OF THE ORBIT.
Nature and Causes. The usual seat of fracture is the orbital process of the frontal bone, yet any portion of the orbital margin may suffer, and even the inner wall or floor of the orbit may be broken by a penetrating instrument. Horses and polled cattle and sheep are especially exposed to the injury, while in horned stock the region is in a measure protected. Carnivora, which have no bony orbital process, are less liable but may still sustain fractures of the remaining parts. Horses and polled ruminants suffer mainly from beating the head on the ground or other solid body in the paroxysms of colic and enteritis, or in nervous affections; horned stock suffer from concussions in fighting and direct blows by the horns. All animals suffer from blows with clubs, kicks and other mechanical injuries.
Symptoms. With (and less frequently without) a skin wound, there may be indication of depression, or mobility of the detached segment, or its sharp edge may be felt, through the skin, or by the sterilized finger introduced into the orbit. In case of a penetrating or stab wound, which cannot be followed by the finger, it may be followed by an aseptic probe and any fracture recognized. The conjunctival sac must be first thoroughly washed out with an antiseptic lotion, as the introduction of any septic germs into the osseous wound, is likely to cause a dangerous infection or abscess.
Treatment. Simple, slight fractures with blunt instruments are treated by rest and cooling, disinfectant lotions. If foreign bodies or detached particles of bone are found in the wound they should be extracted. Shot that are difficult to find, may be left, as they are often aseptic and tend to become encapsuled. Should they cause abscess they will usually be found in the pus sac and may then be removed. Displaced bones may often be replaced by the finger in the orbit. Sometimes they can be best reached by trephining the frontal or maxillary sinus and introducing a lever through the cavity (Hendrickx). If the sinus has been involved it must be opened in any case. Cadiot advises bandages impregnated with black pitch to fix the bones in certain cases. Antiseptic washes (sublimate 1 ∶ 5000) and antiseptic cotton packing are demanded for all wounds.
BRUISES AND WOUNDS OF THE ORBIT.
These may come from the same causes as fractures and though less violent may occasion inflammation which involves the eye or even the brain with fatal results. Thus in horses it has been a cause of infective inflammation, with a fatal extension (Robellet); in cattle a similar inflammation has extended to the cerebral meninges and caused death (Leblanc), and in dogs an advance to the eyeball threatens its destruction (Möller). Short of this necrosis is not uncommon (Rey).